Declining global food security: the scientific challenge of our generation.

So says Julian Cribb* in an opinion piece published on the ABCs website today.

In A Hot, Hungry World Cribb says that in order to avoid wide scale famine, wars over basic resources and a doubling in the number of refugees, we need to double world food output.

Cribb calls for a rapid increase of investment in Agricultural science which he says has been long neglected.

The world - including Australia - has to understand that agriculture policy is defence policy. It is refugee policy, immigration policy, environmental policy and climate as well as health, food and economic policy. No food, no stability, no government.

Yet for decades we have been eroding our technological investment in this vital field. The issues raised here are quite capable of being solved with good science and sound institutions, as they have been in many countries in the past. Now they need to be solved at a global level and with the active help of every person.


*Julian Cribb is the principal of Julian Cribb & Associates, specialists in science communication. He is Adjunct Professor in Science Communication at the University of Technology Sydney and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.